PAJK: Physical freedom of Leader Apo is foundation of women, Kurds’ struggle 

Today, PAJK issued a statement on the occasion of April 4, the birthday of Leader Abdullah Ocalan, stating:

“The birth of Leader Apo is the birth of the free human. Since April 4, 1949, every moment of his life has become a new birth. He dedicated 77 years of his life to society and freedom, which is why April 4 is primarily the birthday of the Kurdish people and women, and the birth of freedom for all women and humanity. The reason millions around the world celebrate this day with great festivities is that it has become an epic of resistance that shatters the claws of denial and cultural annihilation. With this epic birth, Kurdish existence has gained an honorable place within the human family. From a dark, complex, and dead history, a new history has been built that enlightens and gives life, achieved through a half-century struggle for freedom.

Leader Apo is the architect of the Kurdish and women’s renaissance, demonstrating enlightened Kurdish and feminist thought, opening new horizons from Kurdistan to the Middle East and the world. Leader Apo defines his second birth with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and his third birth as a model of democratic modernity, as a great human struggle against colonialism and global capitalism. To purify the world from the filth of state and authority, he established a democratic, ecological, and liberating model for women—he is a freedom fighter. He turned his first birth into new births, making it the birth of the free human, embodying local and global values, representing an identity, personality, and global leadership in which any seeker of freedom, any woman, any belief, culture, or people can find themselves. In the face of a history of male-dominated state systems built on lies, deceit, conspiracy, and annihilation, he revealed a life force grounded in clarity, honesty, courage, ethics, and the philosophy of freedom.

At a time when deliberate killers sought to drag the world into annihilation, Leader Apo, on February 27, 2025, led a new birth through the ‘Call for Peace and Democratic Society.’ This birth signifies the acquisition of free identity and personality for Kurds and women, the recreation of the self, affirmation of existence, and transition to constructive consciousness for the democratic republic. The physical freedom of Leader Apo is an essential condition for the proper development of this process. On the occasion of April 4, we reaffirm that the physical freedom of Leader Apo is the foundation of the struggle of all women and Kurds, and the essential reason for societal support of this process. The main slogan and demand of all activities launched since the beginning of the year, as well as on February 15, March 8, and March 21, remains: ‘Freedom for Leader Apo.’

Leader Apo affirms in the ‘Manifesto of Peace and Democratic Society’ the necessity of restoring women’s status through mythology. In his messages, he describes the half-century struggle for freedom as ‘the era of women’s heroism,’ acknowledging the value of liberatory mythology shaped during this struggle and founded by him. It is a sea of knowledge and construction that illuminates the darkness of male ideologies through this epic legendary struggle, revealing understanding, organization, and activity in women’s advancement and acquisition of free identity and personality. This construction is a source of pride and honor, and transforming these achievements with our leader into a free birth is a duty and guarantee for free Kurdish women and all women. Therefore, we say: Leader Apo’s freedom is our freedom, his existence is our existence, and we live this dialectic deeply, considering its fulfillment a condition of our existence.

With the attainment of philosophical, scientific, and ethical-political consciousness of our new manifesto, we will enhance our practical-political strength by transforming collective memory from women’s liberation ideology into women’s liberation policies. We will assume our responsibilities and call on all women to understand and apply this new birth in the strongest way.

We are determined to carry forward the struggle from Sakin to Beritan, from Zilan to Sima and Deniz, illuminating the path to liberation from our identity as a people, nation, class, and generation that faced the wrath and annihilation of gods, toward freedom.

We will stand as comrades to those who built bridges of fire to transition from the culture of gods to the culture of free women, and we will be worthy of Leader Apo’s struggle to liberate women with dignity in history.

Women who have known freedom and life with Leader Apo will continue their struggle for his physical freedom.”

A-H 

ANHA